


counting seconds through the night

by cafecliche



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety, Established Relationship, I'm drowning in fluff and now y'all get to join me, M/M, Vignettes, healthy relationship alert, mostly post-episode 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 19:43:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9008467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafecliche/pseuds/cafecliche
Summary: In the weird, dizzy clarity of sleep deprivation, Yuuri gets it. Of course he warned Victor it was coming. But he’s not sure he ever told him what to do.(Or: some days, it's all Yuuri can do to manage his own anxiety. He certainly doesn't expect Victor to do it for him.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> As a Professional Anxious Person, YoI's depiction of Yuuri's anxiety is one of my favorites in recent memory - I love that being with Victor doesn't automatically fix anything for Yuuri, and I love that Victor doesn't always know exactly what to do. (And mostly I love that Yuuri's first response to Victor making him cry was 'lol his face was hilarious.' #relationshipgoals)
> 
> So anyway, this happened! Title is from 'I Wanna Get Better' by Bleachers.
> 
> Also: I haven't written fic in three years, what is this show
> 
> [EDIT: And now we are hopefully free of typos.]

After – with the medal ceremony over, the interviews done, tucked back into their Beijing hotel – Yuuri Katsuki decides he’d be perfectly content if they never mentioned his meltdown in the parking garage again.

He thinks he’ll get his wish, for a while. Until Victor murmurs something into the side of his neck.

“I’m sorry.”

“S’fine,” Yuuri says. It’s barely a sound so much as a movement in his throat. Victor’s hold on him is comfortably tight, shrinking the world to a manageable size.

“I’m serious.” Victor steps back, straightens his arms. “I’m sorry.”

“ _Victor_ ,” Yuuri huffs out, half a laugh and half a sigh. He hasn’t slept, he feels like stale sweat, and he’d like to get kissed at least one more time before his eyes roll back into his head. “It really is fine.”

But he’s getting the face. The wide-eyed-concern face. Yuuri knows how he must look to Victor right now.

(He knows because Phichit told him. His first words on the podium, by the way: _You look like death_.

 _Devastatingly handsome, silver medal-winning death_ , Christophe had added reassuringly.)

“Please don’t worry about it.” Yuuri closes the distance between them, rests his forehead against Victor’s chest and hopes he’ll get the hint. “I was a little unfair, too.”

He hears the frown in Victor’s voice. “No you weren’t.”

Yuuri shakes his head. Not then, in the parking garage, and not in what he said. Victor should have known better. _Anyone_ should know better.

It wasn’t as if he’d said the rest of it out loud. _You knew from the start what I’m like. You should have been prepared for this much_. That, he kept to himself. He hoped.

Because in the weird, dizzy clarity of sleep deprivation, he gets it. Of course he warned Victor it was coming. But he’s not sure he ever told him what to do.

“You must’ve thought this would be more fun,” Yuuri mutters. At the small, questioning sound, he clarifies. “Coaching.”

Victor doesn’t deny it, exactly. But he smiles. “This is better.”

Yuuri stills. Then squints up at him. He doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. But.

“Victor,” he says, grinning despite himself. “I meant it when I said it’s fine, but. Earlier. You could have said something like that.”

With a rueful sigh, Victor nods. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

***

(A month and a half later, taking lazy laps around their Barcelona hotel in the hours before the banquet, Yuuri is the one to say he’s sorry.

“You’ve said that already,” Victor says, far more gently than Yuuri deserves. “At least four times now.”

“Not for that,” Yuuri says. “Well, yes. Still for that. But you should know that after you made me cry in China, I thought your face was priceless.”

“Oh. Well.” Victor’s mouth twitches as he rests him palm in the small of Yuuri’s back. “That, you can be a little sorry for.”)

***

Nationals are over for both of them, and moving to Russia is a given. Yuuri is the first to say it out loud. Victor needs his coach, his rinkmates. It’ll be good for Yuuri, too, if he’s going to be serious about this.

Victor comes back to Hasetsu, his first comeback gold in hand, and they start to pack. Victor livetweets the first few hours.

_#Russia bound with #YuuriKatsuki!!_

_Suitcase #1!! Like if you think we can fit more. RT if you think I should buy #YuuriKatsuki new luggage_

_How do you fix a broken zipper_

_Poll: does anyone think this is going to fall open_

_#YuuriKatsuki: paperclip craftsman extraordinaire_

_I don’t think #YuuriKatsuki has ever looked at me like he’s looking at this suitcase_

_Poll: is my fiancé about to leave me for this suitcase_

He’s stopped tweeting by hour four. Or at least, that’s when Yuuri notices Victor has abandoned his phone to circle him cautiously.

“Yuuri,” he says, studiously casual. “Why don’t we break for lunch?”

“In a second,” Yuuri says through clenched teeth, testing the paperclip monstrosity they’ve jury-rigged to his suitcase. “I’m going to try something else.”

It’s not until later, when Victor finally coaxes him onto the couch with a sandwich and a glass of water, that he flips back through Victor’s timeline and sees his own packing-related nervous breakdown, backwards and in slow-motion.

 _Oh,_ he thinks. Because it catches him by surprise sometimes, too.

“It’s later than I thought,” he says. It’s easier than admitting he’s been fixated on one suitcase for nearly two hours.

“Mm.” Victor drapes an arm over the backs of the cushions, jaw working like he’s chewing on his next words. Yuuri thinks he might bite them back. He doesn’t.

“You’ll tell me if this is too much,” he says. It’s halfway between a statement and a question.

Something was going to change, no matter what. Yuuri was going to feel like this no matter what. He’d rather it be for this than anything else. But that’s a thought too fragile to say out loud.

“And don’t say ‘it’s fine,’” Victor says, eyes narrowing as he taps the side of his temple. “I can hear you thinking from here.”

Yuuri’s laugh is mostly a wince. Victor, very kindly, does not bring up the last time Yuuri thought too hard about their respective careers.

“It’ll be different. Good different,” Yuuri adds quickly. “I’ll get used to it.”

Yuuri’s not sure that will mollify him. But at length, he smiles. “I suppose you _have_ done this before.”

“Right,” Yuuri says, swishing his water in a slow circle around the glass. “College.”  The less said about his early years in Detroit, the better.

But there are years between this Yuuri and that one. That must count for something.

***

Yuuri loves St. Petersburg more than he expects. He loves the quiet of Victor’s apartment, nestled in a little enclave of buildings that seem to catch the noises of the city. He loves the early morning runs with Makkachin, the way the bitter cold slaps at any exposed skin, draws him out of his head. He loves their occasional dinner with Yurio, the neverending supply of katsudon pirozhki that he never admits to making himself. He loves Victor’s bed. He could _live_ in that bed.

And he loves Victor, obviously. That’s a given.

But happiness only takes him so far. He kind of suspected as much.

When he’s lucky, it’s just a buzz, tucked into the back of his head. When he’s not, it’s a haze blanketing the visible world. It marks the time and date of every misspoken syllable of Russian, every wrong turn on the way home. It notes every line of irritation in Yakov’s face, every unreadable glance of Victor’s rinkmates. It tells him to count the days until Victor realizes he’s a full-time job.

He knows better. He doesn’t want this if he can’t do it without Victor propping him up. But all the same, he waits to be told, _I can hear you thinking from here_.

(It doesn’t come. Victor’s busy, too. But he coordinates their practice schedules without complaint. He finds and ranks the best Japanese restaurants in St. Petersburg. He generates an unending stream of cutesy Russian pet names, even on – _especially_ on – the days Yuuri couldn’t feel less cute if he tried. Victor does more than enough.)

What you can’t outthink, you can exhaust. He runs further. He practices later. Sometimes, if he’s still upright by the time they get home, he tries to coax Victor to dance with him.

“Now?” A full hour off the ice and Victor _still_ sounds out of breath. “We don’t all have your stamina, darling.”

It’s usually enough to bring a smug smile to his face. But right now, there’s very little Yuuri wouldn’t give just to feel a little bit tired.

***

“It was going to happen.”

It takes some effort to say cleanly. The back half of the last word feels like hitting a wall in his lungs. But it seems like the most important thing to make clear.

“Shh.” Though Yuuri’s face is still buried in his knees, he can feel Victor’s hands hovering, uncertain, somewhere above his head. “Deep breaths.”

Deep breaths are overrated. His head spins with them, like this much oxygen is a luxury. But slowly, his breathing starts to lengthen on its own. And he chances a look at Victor’s stricken, entirely priceless face.

He’s not proud of it, but he has to remind himself not to laugh.

“It was going to happen,” he says again, more firmly.

“Oh, honey.” Oh. Mila’s here. He was hoping, at least, that at least they had the rink to themselves. She murmurs something in Russian – Yuuri catches the word ‘tea’ – and she disappears into the back.

Tea sounds good right about now. The adrenaline is almost completely gone, leaving only the chill of the rink behind.

“Anyway,” Yuuri mumbles. “Sorry.”

Victor shakes his head a little too hard, like Makkachin after a bath. ( _Don’t laugh,_ Yuuri tells himself again.) “Are you okay?”

“What?” Yuuri says stupidly. If Victor’s face is anything to go by, that is not the correct answer. “Oh. Yeah. It’s, um, less dramatic than it looks.”

Victor’s hands are still hovering somewhere above him, like he’s not sure what to do with them. “Do you—“ he course-corrects mid-sentence. “What do you need?”

“Nothing,” Yuuri says quickly. “You don’t have to—what you’re doing is fine.” He catches the way Victor goes rigid. “No, I mean—you don’t have to stand there. Here.”

He makes some room on the lip of the rink, motioning for Victor to sit down next to him. As Victor steps off the ice and folds his long legs, Yuuri pushes in a little closer, until their shoulders bump. It’s about as much as he can manage right now. But this, at least, feels nice.

“What did you mean,” Victor says, “it was going to happen?”

Yuuri shrugs, drawing his nail across the surface of the ice. “I haven’t really slept through the night this week,” he explains to his feet. “This morning I’ve had two cups of coffee and no water. We’re four weeks out from Worlds and I just flubbed the easiest jump in my program. It could have been anything. It could have been all of those.”

“And the move,” Victor says.

Yuuri bites back a sigh. Well. As long as he’s being honest.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t like it here,” he says.

“I didn’t think it did,” Victor says.

Yuuri jolts with a shiver. He forgets how cold the rink can get when you’re not moving. Victor holds up an arm questioningly, and Yuuri slides under it. He expects to feel crowded. But he just feels warm.

“You usually know this is coming?” Victor asks.

“Usually,” Yuuri agrees, tucking his head against Victor’s shoulder.

Victor pauses. When he proceeds, he proceeds gently. “Then you should tell me next time.”

Yuuri opens his mouth to respond. Then snaps it shut again. Then finally says, “Ah.”

“Ahh,” Victor says, only lightly mocking. “Now he gets it.”

Yuuri cranes his neck, squinting at the unhappy line of Victor’s mouth. “You look worse than I feel, you know.”

“Oh.” Victor hastily rearranges his face into a queasy smile. “Sorry.”

And this time, it’s too much.

“Okay,” Yuuri gasps through his laughter. “First of all? That was terrible.”

***

Victor has heated bathroom floors. What kind of person has heated bathroom floors? Five-time consecutive world champion Victor Nikiforov, that’s who.

Yu-topia has heated tatamis, of course, but they’re barely used, redundant in the sticky Kyushu humidity that blankets Hasetsu nine months out of twelve. St. Petersburg in February, on the other hand?  Every surface of the apartment should be heated. That seems totally doable.

That’s how Victor finds him after twenty minutes: sprawled across the bathmat, soaking up the warmth.

Victor regards him for a moment, eyebrows raised. “I don’t want to embarrass you,” he says. “But the bathtub is that one.”

Yuuri grins up at him sleepily. “I live here now. On this floor.”

“… well. In that case.” Victor lowers himself to the floor next to him. “I like what you’ve done with the place. A little sparse, though. Could use some decorating.”

Yuuri bites his lip to keep his smile from spreading. Five-time consecutive world champion Victor Nikiforov is a nerd. A complete and utter nerd.

“Tired?” Victor says.

“Mmhmm.” More tired than he’d be, certainly, if he hadn’t spent the afternoon in varying stages of panic. He reminds himself that isn’t what Victor means.

But he’s thinking something similar. The next words out of his mouth are, “I didn’t realize it could get that bad.”

“It really wasn’t. China was worse.” At Victor’s narrowed eyes, he dryly adds, “I was trying to hold it together for a certain someone who made me cry.”

Victor’s mouth sinks into a pout. “I thought we were even.”

“We are,” Yuuri says innocently. But he can still give Victor just a little shit for it.

But. That doesn't mean he wants Victor thinking he's going to hyperventilate every time he misses a jump.

“Anyway, it… it’s not like this is a regular thing," he says. "Before China, it hadn’t happened since… maybe right before Onsen on Ice?”

Victor’s fingers lace through his. “I didn’t realize that.”

“You were working with Yurio.” It’s tricky to shrug from his current position. He manages it anyway. “I was at Ice Castle with Yuu-chan. There’s no reason you would have known.”

He still remembers the look Yuuko gave him, once he was finally calm. _Someone should walk you home,_ she’d said. _Let me call Victor._

 _I can walk myself home. But thank you_. He’d focused on the buttons of his coat when she didn’t look away.

 _This is a lot, Yuu-chan_ , he’d muttered, in response to the unasked question. He hadn’t clarified what, exactly. She didn’t ask.

 _You can ask for more,_ was all she’d said.

“This is a lot,” he says again, in the present, to Victor. This time he gestures, vaguely, at himself.

Victor smiles, unbothered. “So?”

And suddenly Victor’s very nice, very warm bathroom is very blurry.

Yuuri swipes at his eyes under his glasses, not even close to casual, and Victor’s fingers twitch under his. “So,” Victor says. “Should I just kiss you, or…”

Yuuri levels a long, watery stare at him. “Seriously?”

Laughing, Victor pulls their linked hands together and kisses each of Yuuri’s fingers, one by one. He’s old-fashioned beyond belief, sometimes. Yuuri’s not entirely sure he’s going to survive it this time.

He ruins it. He has to. It’s that, or cry harder.

“You’re so embarrassing,” he laughs, his voice thick.

Smiling serenely, Victor rolls on top of him until he’s choking on his own laughter.

***

“Look what I found.”

“Oh my god, no.” Yuuri claws his way out of the depths of Victor’s stupidly comfortable bed, making a wild grab for the laptop. Victor easily hoists it above his head. “No, Victor, turn it off.”

“Come on, just look at you,” Victor coos, bringing the video to fullscreen. “Little baby Yuuri’s first Skate America! Look how scared you are!”

“I wonder why,” Yuuri says flatly. At Victor’s blank look, he adds, “Might have something to do with a certain lifelong idol just offscreen there.”

Victor has the decency to look mildly chastened, just for a second, as he squints at the video. “Is Celestino holding you up?”

“I thought he’d have to carry me to the rink,” Yuuri says. And for once, instead of embarrassment, the first thing he feels a rush of sympathy for his younger, petrified self.

The Yuuri in the video leans in to Celestino – and though his face is pixelated, he clearly says something that makes his coach laugh. “Aww,” Victor trills. “Do you remember what you said?”

Yuuri feels the blood climbing to his cheeks. “I told him there was a very real chance that I would throw up on his shoes,” he says. “And he said, I have other shoes.”

“Ohh,” Victor says, genuinely, deeply impressed. “That’s a good line.”

Yuuri looks at him for a long moment, and knows that despite his smile, he’s taking notes. He still thinks, maybe, that there’s One Correct Way to flip the switch in Yuuri’s head, that he just hasn’t found it yet.

If he asks – and one of these days, he might – Yuuri would tell him that no two people in his life have ever done it the same way. Minako takes him practice. Phichit plies him with water and makes him laugh. Yurio, though he’d never admit it, casually positions himself between Yuuri and the crowds as they walk in the city. Nishigori fusses in the way only a father of three can. And Yuuko very quietly, very patiently, waits him out.

(When he lists it all like that, side by side, it feels like more than he deserves. But he knows they’d say it was nothing. That’s almost as good as believing it himself.)

“So,” is what Yuuri finally says out loud. “You’re saying if I ever threw up on your shoes, you’d be fine with it?”

“Well.” Victor beams down at him, bright and overwhelmingly fond. “If you promise to aim, I promise to dodge.”

Yuuri kisses the side of his jaw. “And they say chivalry is dead.”

***

“Yuu-ri.” The voice comes from somewhere deep within the blankets. “You’re going for a run?”

“Mm,” Yuuri says, clipping Makkachin into his leash. “I’m a little jittery this morning, so… was thinking that would help.”

It’s very carefully casual, the way he says it. A test balloon, tossed over his shoulder. Victor extracts himself from the covers, his features obscured in the early morning light.

“I could come with you,” Victor says, just as carefully.

Yuuri looks back at him, and remembers: _You can ask for more_.

“Ten minutes,” he says through a smile. “Or I’m leaving without you.”

“Darling,” Victor says, through a massive yawn. “You underestimate me.”


End file.
